Great cruise on the Westerdam

My husband and I took this cruise with our son and his wife.  We are in our 60s and our son is in his early thirties and his wife late twenties.    We all had a very good time, but our son and his wife  would have liked it better with more people around their age.  Holland America does seem to attract older people. That said, they did enjoy themselves.

The ship is really beautiful and very well maintained.  Check-in went very quickly and easily, which has always been our experience with Holland America.  Debarkation was also smooth.  We were in the last group since our flight wasn't until 2:30 so we were in no hurry, which made it pretty low stress.  We appreciated being able to wait in our cabins rather than try to find space in public areas for ourselves and our carry-ons.

We had excellent service, though the late cleaning and turn down by our room steward was much later than we're used to.  This may have been through no fault of his and was not a big deal.  Service in the dining room was excellent.

The food was some of the best we've had on a cruise both in the dining room and in the buffet. 

We enjoyed the ports.  We did those on our own.  After we tendered in at Cabo San Lucas we got a water taxi that took us around the peninsula and then back to where there is very good snorkeling - no coral but a lot of fish.  We agreed on a time and he came back to pick us up and take us back.  In Mazatlan we took a taxi to the Golden Zone for some shopping, had lunch back on the ship and then walked several blocks to the water taxi to Stone Island.  We rented chairs and the others went swimming.  At Puerto Vallarta we took a shared van to the start of the Malecon and explored and shopped.

Activities: My husband and son would have liked more active activities.  They did play soccer with some other men one afternoon and played HORSE on the basketball court.  I attended a series of classes on Windows 10 that happened every day.  I really enjoyed those.  There were also America's Test Kitchen cooking demonstrations as well as several by the onboard chefs.  Of course there was trivia, which we didn't do.  We brought several card games and played those in the evenings so we only went to one show with a magician and that was very good.